LAST EDITED ON 10-21-23 AT 09:44 PM (EST)So, I guess a Standford graduate that was a great athlete, a great narrator and actually won some challenges for his tribe would be a great casting choice, wouldn't he?
See, this is where we disagree most. ONE OF THE BEST CAsting choices E-V-E-R was Bobby Mason. He's actually my favorite all-time pre-merger boot and I regret deeply that he didn't last longer. I also got to exchange with Bobby for about a year, almost as regularly as I have with you during a season. He got on the internet and was funny as hell.
Another fan of Bob-Dawg was Mario Lanza and I'll copy what he wrote in the entry he dedicated to the Exile Island great:
- «Bobby Mason was only around for five episodes of Survivor: Exile Island. In fact a lot of casual Survivor fans probably don't even remember him. But he leaves behind a legacy that is so large, and so distinct, and, well let's face it, so unique, that I don't think he will ever be topped.
I mean, seriously, this is a guy who went to Stanford and Amherst, who holds a law degree, who is probably one of the smartest and wittiest guys who has ever been cast on the show (seriously, listen to how fast he talks sometime, he is hard to transcribe), yet he tries to pass himself off as a thug gangster so that people will underestimate him. Or, as Bobby once described himself, "Lawyer by day, rapper by night."
Just check out this quote he gave in an interview below, where he describes his image and his strategy going into Exile Island::
"I see it all the time-- no matter what schools I have on my resume, people just assume they’re smarter than me based on how gangsterish I look. I cultivate that image obviously so I’m not complaining. Just saying I’d find a couple of cats that like me but (mistakenly) think they’re smarter than me, and I’d let them ‘lead’ and ‘determine policy’ but in the end they’d only be doing so to the extent I let them."
Here's another interview, where he elaborates on his Exile Island strategy in, uh, typical BobDawg way:
"I hid the fact that I’m a lawyer. I wanted people to think I was the big, happy go lucky, gentle giant type that was just happy to be there. No threat, just want to smash foos in challenges and keep things light around camp. I didn’t want to lead, I didn’t want to get into arguments, I didn’t want to be recognized for anything except smokin’ foos in challenges. Secretly, I’d be one of the smartest players in the game and one of the best schemers."
So anyway, yeah. This was a guy who had all sorts of nuance and depth and interesting character quirks going on behind those eyes. It's just a shame that we only got five episodes of greatness to remember him by.
In episode one of Exile Island, we meet Bobby in the first five minutes of the game. And we immediately see how witty he is when he describes the way the tribes have been divided by age and by gender. In the first five minutes of the episode, he drops one of the best confessionals of the season.
There was the young beefcake crowd. Of which I was charter member and president..."
.then there was the Love Boat crowd, which was the older men..."
"... there was the Golden Girls..."
.and then there was the Spice Girls. It'll be interesting to see how things shake out."
Bobby's next epic moment in Exile Island came in episode three, and to this day remains one of my favorite challenge moments in Survivor history. Check out the recap below. There's no way I can watch this scene and not laugh at the ending.
It's the final round of the immunity challenge, and Bobby and Ruth-Marie are squaring off (along with Terry and Danielle) in a sandpit pillow wrestling challenge.
At the end of the round, Ruth-Marie grabs the pillow and attempts to run with it back to her mat. Meanwhile the Almighty Dawgsta is in hot pursuit.
Ruth-Marie realizes who is about to catch her and practically shits her pants
Bobby doesn't want to hurt poor little Ruth-Marie (because he is easily like 3 times her size and 10 times her might), so he just grabs her by the sports bra and drags her face first over to the Casaya mat. I love it.
BobDawg easily makes it to the Funny 115 just for this moment alone.
Oh and then comes the best part: It's kind of hard to explain this if you have never read about it before, but Bobby has a complicated set of poses that he tries to hit whenever he is celebrating something. There are three poses in all. In order, they are called "King's Ransom", "Double Dragon" and "Warrior's Honor." I swear to God I am not making this up. When Bobby hits all three poses in a row, it is called a "Sparta's Revenge."
And just why does Bobby have these three poses he names? Well I guess I'll just let him describe it in his own words. This is from his appearance on the Early Show: "You know, I'm from L.A. And we have a tendency to do that. We assign fantabulous names to things that aren't fantabulous."
But wait! There's more!
In episode four, we get the great scene where Casaya wins a full bathroom in a reward challenge. It is called Casa de Charmin, and when the Casayas come back from the challenge it has already been delivered to their camp. The Casayas immediately take a vote and decide that they aren't going to use Casa de Charmin as a bathroom. Nope. They are going to use it to store wood.
Which, of course, doesn't sit too well with the almighty Mr. Dawgsta. Now if the Ruth-Marie sports bra scene wasn't already memorable enough, here you go. This is where it all begins. This is where the Legend of The Almighty Dawgsta truly was born.
obby (in a confessional, laughing) explains it to us: "The rocket scientist brain trust that we have decided immediately that the first thing we were gonna do with our fresh new brand new toilet was store wood in it."
"I was like... alright. I'm gonna go in here and take a dump before you start storing wood in the toilet."
And this is where the Deuceman officially Cometh: "Does anyone mind if I break in the dumpster? I got a deuce to drop."
Danielle looks on in stunned disbelief as BobDawg doesn,t wait for an answer to enter the bathroom. Danielle looks horrifued. And when Shane asked how it feels, Bob answers: "Feels about ten pounds lighter. I'm like a whole new man.
So anyway, that's two epic BobDawg moments. Want more? Well here you go!
In episode five, Bobby pretty much single-handedly wins reward for the Casayas. He wins it because of his mighty fish-chopping skills.
Bobby wins a picnic-- including wine-- for his tribe. But alas, that is probably the last happy moment he will have in the game. Because later that night, with a storm coming down around them, Bobby and Bruce (for unknown reasons) are kicked out of the Casaya shelter. They spend the night sitting together in the outhouse.
And what do Bobby and Bruce decide to do about the fact that they have been kicked out of the shelter and are now sleeping together in a shithouse?
Why they take the last Casaya bottle of wine and they drink it.
Just to spite everyone.
Once Bobby drinks the last bottle of Casaya wine, his adventure is basically over. He wakes up the next morning to find that everybody is pissed at him
When Courntye confronts him about drinking the wine, Bob Dawg has an epic rebuttal and he explained it in an interview after Exile Island:
"That was a weird day. I woke up in the outhouse before Bruce did-- or more accurately, I just got out first because I never made it to sleep. I had been laying with my back on the floor with my legs straight up in the air against the inside of the outhouse, trying not to suffocate with all the pressure on my lungs and trying not to swallow termites that were crawling all over my face. I came out and ran into Courtney and she immediately started in on me with the passive aggressive stuff like "So, uh, where were you!" like we were old buddies and I ran out on my bar tab or something.
I tried to shake it off but she wouldn’t stop with the "hey, have you seen the bottle of wine?" and "I wonder where it went…" I hate that passive aggressive crap. That’s a sign of weakness in my book. Just say what’s on your mind (BobDawg Da Rules #3). I was trying to be diplomatic and actually apologized to everyone and everyone said it wasn’t a big deal (oh they didn’t show that? Wow, amazing) but she wouldn’t let it go. So at some point BobDawg thought "BobDawg gotsta shut her up. BobDawgsta can’t go out like that on national tv." But Bobby Mason didn’t want to completely unload on her, cuz Bobby Mason was trying to win. So we split the difference and we told her what we told her.
That bottle of wine: $7.99. The look on her face: priceless. It was almost worth getting voted out over…"
It started when Courntye asked: "Hey, what happened to you guys last night?"
Bob answered: «It looked like our spots were taken so ,I ended up crashing in the Casa de Charmin.»
«What happened to the last bottle of wine?» asked Courtney
Bob - «I drank it»
Courtney: «You drank it.»
-«Yeah.»
Courtney - «How do you feel about that?»
Bob - «I feel swell about it.»
Courtney just stares at him in disbelief
Courtney in confessional: «"We all worked very hard for that wine out here. It was like... super special."
Bobdawg in confessional: «"Courtney definitely had a right to be upset. I just don't need to hear it. Like, I really don't care what she thinks. She's probably one of the two or three most annoying people probably in the history of the world."
When Courtney wouldn,t let it drop and kept asking why he would do that, Bobdawg just stares at her in silence, She goes on and on so he finally shuts her up, turns hs back on her and says: «"I don't feel bad that I stole your wine. "Like... I feel bad that I deprived them of wine. But I have no hard feelings whatsoever about the fact that you've been deprived of wine."
Yes, that got Bob dawg voted out but it also led to legendary final words: «"... I could have played it differently but the truth was, I just couldn't stomach a lot of these jokers.. People in Casaya were bonded together out of weakness. Out of desperation. Courtney, Danielle, and Shane were spineless little twerps, all of 'em. And just bein' around 'em made me wanna throw up." / end of transcript
Knowing how you hated Casaya, I'd think you'd embrace Bob Dawg.